


Mealy-Mouthed, Dirt-Bellied

by cassieoh



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Cain and Abel and everything that goes with that, Captivity, Demonic summoning, Enthusiastic Consent, F/F, First Time, Food Metaphors, Happy Ending, Held Down, Hurt Crowley (Good Omens), Hurt/Comfort, Ineffable Wives, Nonlinear Narrative, Other, Proselytizing, Protective Aziraphale (Good Omens), Scene: Church in London 1941 (Good Omens), Snow White Elements, Solitary Confinement, South Downs Cottage (Good Omens), Strangulation, The Fall (Good Omens), The Night At Crowley's Flat (Good Omens), bc youre worried dammit, but not really bc Crowley doesn't need to breathe, but the last scene might not be, but they're broken up by a LOT of soft ones, dicussion of metaphysical hunger/starvation, discussions of bondage, important! there's no sex in the angsty bits, just as a heads up, look there are dark scenes, no actual eating disorder, nonspecific genitals, talking about why your wife suddenly wants something very specific, the chronological ending is happy, themes of disordered eating
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-01
Updated: 2020-11-01
Packaged: 2021-03-09 02:00:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,905
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27316666
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cassieoh/pseuds/cassieoh
Summary: "I don't understand," Aziraphale laments. "They were both such sweet boys, how could he—" she stops and swallows heavily."It's like,” Crowley whispers, touching the sunrise pink blossom of Adam's favorite flower with the tip of her index finger, "like you want something. So badly your wings ache for wanting, and you're sure, sure, that if you don't get that thing you'll cease to exist. Have you ever felt that?" Crowley glances at Aziraphale and then quickly away again when she catches the flash of oasis-blue eyes seeking her own fetid, rot-yellow. She's suddenly parched and she doesn't know why."No," Aziraphale says and it breaks something loose deep in Crowley's hollow chest. "I haven't ever felt that. I don't think angels are capable of such things."*****Crowley is summoned and Aziraphale is displeased, to say the least.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 26
Kudos: 83





	Mealy-Mouthed, Dirt-Bellied

**Author's Note:**

  * In response to a prompt by Anonymous in the [LegendaryIneffables](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/LegendaryIneffables) collection. 
  * In response to a prompt by Anonymous in the [LegendaryIneffables](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/LegendaryIneffables) collection. 



> Huge thanks to [cumaeansibyl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cumaeansibyl/pseuds/cumaeansibyl) for the beta!!
> 
> (re: the numbers - they're to tell you where in time you are in relation to a moment 0)

* * *

**2**

* * *

There is a moment, before Crowley opens her eyes, when the world doesn’t exist. She’s always delighted in that moment, chasing it in naps and siestas and slumbers and, occasionally, hibernations. She’s an empty thing, wrought from flawed ore, but in that fraction of a second after waking, she doesn’t feel that way. She breathes when she sleeps and when she wakes it’s always on the inhale, so she breathes in and she holds it and somehow the ache of full lungs and still-slumbering muscles feels like spinning the stars into being, like being wreathed in flame and having a purpose or being a purpose, like she’s potentiality given form.

When she wakes and breathes in this time she doesn’t feel that surge of life and power and Everything that she’s used to.

Her breath catches in her throat and stays there. Her ribs expand but they hold nothing save useless organs. She’s… empty.

Eventually, she drags her eyes open. The world around her is dark, dim enough that even her serpent’s eyes cannot pierce the gloom. She very carefully does not groan. Anyone paying attention will already know she's awake, but a groan is an emotion and she doesn't know what of herself she'll be allowed to keep. Emotions might be the sum of it. Giving those away too early is foolish beyond measure.

In lieu of moving, Crowley casts her mind out, expanding the core of her being from tight coils to a thin, writhing net. The constant motion at the borders of her is something she alternately loves and loathes. She wasn't meant to move quickly. Her work as an angel had been on the grandest of scales; the lives of even the most enduring creatures were naught but a heartbeat to her creations. Stars were born and grew and died, often in spectacular ways, but they did it slowly enough that they appeared all but motionless to all other beings in Creation. At her core, Crowley still feels that is how she’s meant to be; ever shifting, ever moving from nebula to star to giant to supernova and back to nebula, an endless, inexorable cycle, but it’s meant to be careful, slow.

Then she Fell, and that perpetual motion was taken and twisted, forced into something overwhelming and fast. As she lay on the banks of the lake of sulfur she’d gathered up that speed, the strings and quarks and electrons excited higher and higher and higher, and she’d shoved them as far from her center as she could. The result is a core as slow to change as the spaces between galaxies, surrounded by a roiling envelope of speed and friction and sharp jabs that only hurt because they pass so quickly. The outer coils are observant and they filter what they see and feel and hear into the center of her, where the slow wisdom of eons can make sense of things. 

The edge of her mind snags and she recoils because it _hurts_.

An inhuman noise escapes her, followed rapidly by a string of curses because there goes her 'keep something back' strategy.

"Bloody fucking heaven," she finishes with, twisting as she does so to lay on her back, feet tucked up close to her rear, knees in the air. She doesn't know how large the circle is yet, only that it exists. Her feet are bare, the ground below them cold and rough. Stone, it feels like, she thinks, fragile hope beginning to curdle in her gut. Wood she could have worked with, even brick wasn’t insurmountable. But stone?

She can’t—

“You’re awake.”

Crowley stills. Instinctively, she allows the star at her core to collapse into a black hole, the gravity drawing her outer coils in and in and in, tighter and tighter until all that remains between them and the event horizon is the glint of a bright blue eye and the taste of bergamot on Crowley’s tongue, despite not having sipped tea that day.

Her lips and tongue are the only things that move as she says, “And you’re very, very stupid.”

He laughs.

* * *

“You know, I don’t actually want to do this.”

Crowley looks up from the symbols carved in great loops around her. She was right, it’s not only stone, but granite, pale grey and whites mottled together in a pattern that she actually might have liked in a kitchen. She can’t say she’s a fan right now.

“Great,” she says, giving him a broad smile, “Then you can just say the word and we’ll both go about our days. I can go back to my wife and you can go back to bible-humping. Oh! My apologies, bible- _th_ umping. That’s the word.”

“That’s just it,” he says, running one hand through his hair. He’s sweat-soaked and even through the haze that seems to weaken her senses, Crowley thinks he smells of fear. “Your _wife._ ”

Crowley braces herself to hear some nonsense about how she’s a devil who’s tempted a good Christian woman into sin and homosexuality with her evil ways or whatever, but the young man surprises her.

“She loves you! She wouldn’t stop talking about you when we visited. You should have heard her!” Crowley’s chest feels as if it’s caving in. Of course she knows Aziraphale loves her, she got over the majority of those doubts in the months that followed the failed Apocalypse, but there’s a deep wound that still hurts when she remembers the years of believing she could never be loved at all, much less in the way she so desperately craved.

“And?” Crowley manages to bite out. She’s very carefully holding her casual posture, insolent and almost rude but necessary to keep any semblance of composure.

“And it’s a lie!” He stops his pacing and stares at her. “Did she fall in love with You or the woman whose body you stole?”

 _Oh fuck_ Crowley thinks, because if that’s what he thinks he’s doing, if he thinks there’s some poor lost soul trapped inside her, then there will be nothing at all she can do to dissuade him. She waits until he turns around to begin pacing again, and snaps.

The agony is instant and all-consuming, shrieking through the entirety of her being, tearing, rending, at once inexorable gravity and opposing magnetic poles. Crowley thinks she’s screaming, but she can’t hear it, can’t feel anything past the pain. She’s only rarely felt anything like this and had always been able to go find Aziraphale for comfort before.

Crowley desperately wants Aziraphale.

She falls into darkness.

* * *

**-3**

* * *

The oysters are slimy and strange and Crowley would hate everything about them were it not for the pleased expression on Aziraphale’s face or the little sounds she makes after each one. _Hmm_ and _ohh_ and _ah_ and Crowley finds herself forgetting she’s in a restaurant at all as she stares through the lenses she’s not yet grown accustomed to and tries to forget the noises.

The ache in her belly grows.

Worse, this time she can’t even deny it.

She’s been starving for as long as she can remember. Even Before she hungered for something, though she can no longer remember what it was. Maybe that was what she’d asked. She knows—

“Crowley, dear?” Aziraphale’s voice cuts through her thoughts, the _dear_ still new enough that Crowley twitches a bit to hear it. Aziraphale had first used it at Golgotha and Crowley, who’d been wearing men’s clothes for a few decades at that point, had wished desperately for the reprieve of a veil behind which to hide her blush. Yeshua had known how he felt, had listened with patient ears and vicious teasing as Crowley took him out to the desert, had told him that he was worthy of love and that he was sure Aziraphale cared for him.

Aziraphale reaches across the space between them, laying one elegantly plump hand on the back of Crowley’s. “Are you alright?”

Crowley draws a ragged breath.

“Fine,” she manages even as the emptiness yawns. It’s so much more apparent now that she’s filled it a bit with those sighs and moans. As if by having a taste, Crowley’s defined the space of it and now she can’t even pretend at ignorance.

Aziraphale gives her a look but allows the lie. She leans back into her seat and scoops up another oyster.

“Who thought these were a good idea anyway?” Crowley asks, poking at one of the half-dozen still arrayed before her.

“Oh don’t play with it,” Aziraphale scolds. “Here.” She stands and crosses to the lounge Crowley was sprawled across. It takes a moment for Crowley’s wine-dulled mind to realize that she means to sit beside her, and by the time the thought has percolated it’s far too late to do anything but watch in awe as Aziraphale settles at her side, the gentle swell of her hip warm against the sharp angles of Crowley.

“Like this.” Aziraphale pulls the oysters closer and begins to doctor them, adding pinches from the seasoning jars and a drizzle of balsamic and, after a long moment breathing deeply and worrying at her thumbnail, a tiny splash of wine. Then, she holds the entire concoction up, presenting it to Crowley.

“What.”

Aziraphale giggles. “You’re meant to eat it, Crowley.”

“I know _that,”_ Crowley snaps. That hadn’t been what she was asking. At all. But, she doesn’t know the words to put the other question more clearly, so instead she leans forward.

Aziraphale lifts the oyster shell, her hands steadier than Crowley thinks hers have ever been. The liquid barely shivers until Crowley’s breath hits it, sending ripples across the shining surface. The cool edge of the shell touches her lip and Crowley nearly jumps out of her skin, except the contact is grounding. Aziraphale tilts it and Crowley cannot help but open her mouth to accept the oyster. It slides onto her tongue in a riot of flavor, the sweet burn of the vinegar playing off the dry depth of the wine, both serving to elevate the brine. It tastes as if she’s standing at the seaside, head thrown back, mouth wide.

Crowley swallows it whole and then laughs because that had been _good._

Aziraphale is beaming at her, leaning forward a little herself, as if drawn in by the gravity of Crowley. The places where their bodies touch feel as if they’re on fire.

“Good?” Aziraphale asks, her voice oddly breathy.

Crowley nods. She’s reluctant to speak, to open her mouth and taste anything else. But, Aziraphale looks expectant so she does, parting her lips to say it had been delicious, except as soon as she does that her senses are flooded with _Aziraphale._ She smells like ozone and old scrolls and the little dabs of scented oil she’s been putting behind her ears for the last thousand years. Crowley has to blink back a sudden flood of tears that she doesn’t fully understand.

“Crowley? Oh, I’m so sorry. That was foolish of me. It’s just that you didn’t look like you were enjoying them and I remembered how well you’d liked the opposing flavors the last time you were in Maurya and I thought I could fix it. I just wanted—”

Crowley catches Aziraphale’s fluttering hands in her own, clasping them together. The angel’s words peter off as she stared up at Crowley with wide eyes.

“It was delicious, angel,” Crowley tells her. “The best thing I’ve ever eaten.”

“Oh!” Aziraphale smiles at her, cheeks flushed. “Good! That’s- I mean, I’m ever so glad.”

The rest of the meal passes similarly. Aziraphale eats a few oysters of her own, chattering away as she does so about the various people she’s met since she arrived in Rome and about all the places she thinks Crowley might like. Every so often, she prepares another one for Crowley, handing it over without a break in her monologue. Crowley takes them and each is a revelation anew.

Crowley gorges herself; on oysters and conversation and the warmth of someone _wanting_ her there, of someone worrying about Crowley enjoying herself. She drinks her fill and more of Aziraphale and as the sun sets Crowley realizes for the first time exactly what it is that she’s been hungry for all these centuries.

 _Of course_ , she thinks as she watches Aziraphale carefully refill both of their cups with the overly deliberate motions of someone trying very very hard to appear less drunk than they are, _of course I cannot be content as things are._

Because she never has been. She’s always wanting more. Always hungry for answers or knowledge or that ephemeral connection all humans seem to share.

She’s hungry for Aziraphale and she knows she cannot partake because there’s no way she can sate herself and not ruin the angel.

So, belly full and chest aching, Crowley resigns herself to hunger.

* * *

**5**

* * *

Crowley has always had a unique relationship with time. When she’s feeling charitable, she thinks of the way that she can feel each electron whirling through the vast universe, and she enjoys being the only one around who knows both where they are and how fast they’re going[1]. Even Aziraphale can’t read the way of things in the same manner as Crowley, though she _can_ the color red, so win-some, lose-some.

Mostly, Crowley likes her relationship with time. When she’s bored she can pluck a single chord of the vast universal symphony and slow down the passage of time around a single ant or speed it up just as a corrupt CEO sits down for his favorite meal, making it pass in the blink of an eye, so fast he can’t even enjoy the memory.

She’s never used it on Aziraphale, that feels like a violation of the highest order, but she’s more than a little guilty of using it on herself, drawing out last glimpses and moments into entire hours, days, private eternities in which she can drink in a smile or a laugh, time enough to glut herself on everything she can’t have without making Aziraphale uncomfortable.

Before the Apocalypse it had been enough, those stolen fragments, and after it she’d never needed them.

But, she’s always been able to feel the potential at her fingertips; the rush of electrons and the static burn of spacetime as it ripples around her.

That’s gone now.

She doesn’t realize it for uncountable days, not until she’s worn her voice to nothing but shattered glass raging at her captor.

The world is still.

When he’s not there she hears nothing, sees nothing, _feels nothing._

No matter what, she should be able to feel the press of time as it marches ever forward, and yet the scales of her true self feel nothing at all.

“Fuck,” Crowley whispers into the impenetrable dark when she finally realizes this. Then, again, louder, “FUCK.”

She slams her clenched fists down on the cold granite, once, twice, _threefourfivesixseven_ — Crowley loses count, so wrapped up in her fury and the sudden creeping fear that something far worse than simple isolation is happening to her. Bright red drops of blood fleck the mottled surface around her and she hates them nearly as much as she hates the floor when it’s clean because Aziraphale always looks so sad when Crowley hurts herself. She never means to, she wants to tell the angel in her mind, _you know I don’t mean to. I’m just_

_Broken, jagged, twisted, an unholy thing good only for hurting and when there is no one there to hurt but herself, what can anyone expect?_

She’s always been able to feel time. Even Falling hadn’t taken that from her. What the fuck was this human doing that he’d managed to?

When her anger burns through her meagre store of energy, Crowley is left curled on her side in the _blessed bloody circle,_ aching fists held close to her chest, chin tucked so low over them that her lips brush her knuckles in a cruel parody of the way she knows Aziraphale would kiss the hurt away.

“Angel,” she says, refusing to whisper it, refusing to sound afraid as she prays, “please, I know you’re looking but I’m…. I need you, Aziraphale.”

A low chuckle cuts through the air and Crowley flinches, curling tighter around her hands and hating both him and herself for that reaction. She’s the bane of countless kings and she flinches from this… this pissant little proselytizer?

That thought gives Crowley the strength to push through the haze that has descended over her. She presses her aching hands to the ground and levers herself upward, swaying to a stop at something that approximates a sitting position. She can still stand, but she’s not sure she could manage more than a few shuffling steps, even if the circle wasn’t a barrier.

Then, the man does something very stupid.

He’s standing there at the edge of the circle, looking at Crowley with that same hopeful look he’s worn for the last few visits. She hates him, hates that look, hates the quiet way he reassures her that it’ll all be okay if only the demon in her lets go, she won’t have to have something so repulsive in her ever again[2]

“Fuck off,” Crowley snarls.

“Oh, dear,” he sighs. Crouching down in something that Crowley can’t help but think of as youth-pastor-trying-to-be-relatable, he says, “Did you know I realized something today?”

Crowley bites her tongue holding back the invectives that want to spill forth. She’s too tired.

“That’s good, darling,” he says. “I can tell when you’re fighting, when the demon is tired and you shine through. I bet you’re a spitfire when you’re free.”

Crowley shudders.

She doesn’t know how long she’s been here, it feels like a bubble cut off from the universe proper, but with each visit it seems the man is peeling away bits of her, taking something with him each time and leaving her behind, more hollow than ever.

“Why don’t you come here and find out what a _spitfire_ I am.” Crowley hates that he used that word. That’s not his word. Aziraphale has called her that on rare occasions since they attended each other’s attempted execution, a shorthand reference to Crowley threatening the Archangels with hellfire.

Why does he have to poison everything? To call her dear and darling and spitfire and talk of how Aziraphale must love her and how unworthy of that love she is.

Crowley blinks and when she opens her eye again he’s closer, crossing the borders of the circle as he speaks.

“I realized that I’ve not introduced myself to you. That’s unacceptable. Here I am going on about how awful it must be for you to be denied your basic humanity and I’m not even offering you the courtesy of an introduction.”

Crowley stares up at him, hardly hearing the words leaving his mouth as he crosses the scant space between her and the edge of the circle. 

Could he really be so—

He crouches again, too close now. Crowley can feel the heat rolling off him in waves, startling after the chill of the granite.

“I’m Prosper,” he says and holds out one hand for her to shake.

Crowley looks between the outstretched hand and his wide smile. She really can’t believe her luck. Slowly, watching him the entire time, waiting for the bait and switch, she shifts her weight and rises to her knees.

“What’s your name?” Her captor, _Prosper,_ asks. Then, when Crowley opens her mouth, he shakes his head. “No, not the thing inside you. What’s _your_ name?”

Crowley hesitates one more second, gathering every possible scrap of strength she has left, and takes his hand, gripping tightly.

“It’s Crowley, you sanctimonious prick,” she snarls. Then, before he can react, she’s lunging for the border of the circle, her hand an inescapable claw latched into his flesh.

Once, many centuries before, Crowley had spoken with a demon unfortunate enough to be summoned from Hell to Earth. He’d been trapped for nearly six years before growing desperate enough to throw caution to the wind and attempt to cross the boundaries of the circle that bound him. He should have been burned from existence, or at least discorporated, but instead he’d discovered that if a demon was touching the hand that drew the circle, that demon would pass through with impunity.

Crowley had been watching, she’d been waiting for her moment, and she knows that this is the last chance she’ll have. Her legs shake beneath her as she moves and she doesn’t think she’ll make it far. But, she doesn’t need to. She only needs to cross the farthest ring and snap and-

She’s made it across the two inner circles when Prosper plants his feet and yanks back. Crowley stumbles but doesn’t let go of his hand. Already she feels stronger, though she knows Miracles are still far outside her reach. She takes another staggering step towards the last circle, dragging Prosper with her. Her shoulder and elbow hurt, but that’s nothing on her hand. Prosper is tearing at it with his free hand, perfectly manicured fingernails digging into her skin as she holds tighter and tighter.

“You. Stupid. Bitch.” All civility is gone from his voice, and if she weren’t so tired Crowley might laugh because that’s exactly what she’s always found with supposed ‘holy men’; as soon as things don’t go their way suddenly they’re ‘only human’ again and all the violence and abuse they’ve got bubbling up inside spills forth.

Another step. She’s so close now.

Crowley doesn’t know how long she’s been trapped, how long she’s been in the dark, but she can see the faintest traces of light now.

 _Aziraphale_ , she thinks.

One more step and her bare toe brushes the edge of the circle.

There’s a flash, a split second where it all rushes through Crowley. Time and light and Heaven and Hell and Miracles and Aziraphale, oh _Aziraphale is there and she’s frantic because Crowley’s been gone for_ —

And then Prosper hits her over the head with something large and heavy and Crowley crashes to the floor, unconscious.

* * *

**-1**

* * *

When the bus pulls away—the driver having remembered he was meant to be headed for Oxford, not Mayfair—Crowley and Aziraphale stand on the sidewalk and stare after it in silence. Crowley feels worn thin by the day, her relief at not having lost Aziraphale a fragile shell over the yawning chasm of grief that she’d really only had time to glimpse. She takes a shuddering breath and then another because she _can_. She’d expected to die on the M25 and then again when Satan rose from Hell and yanked her to the asphalt.

But she can still take a breath and Aziraphale’s hand is still in hers and they’re less than thirty-five steps from her flat.

She sways on the spot, blinking against the black spots that suddenly crowd the edges of her vision.

“Crowley?” Aziraphale squeezes her hand.

“Hjgsim?” Crowley manages and is rather put out when it’s less eloquent than intended. She tries again, clearing the hellash from her throat. “Whajawa?”

Hm.

That was…. Closer. She hopes.

It must have meant _something_ because Aziraphale is smiling at her and trying to cover it by hiding the lower half of her face behind her hand.

Then Aziraphale is kissing her, right there on the street. There’s no one out and about to see, it’s well after midnight by this point, but Crowley still makes a startled noise.

Aziraphale tastes like sweat and ozone and there’s something else, something that sparks against Crowley’s lips and burns her even as it pulls her in. She’s almost annoyed at it because she’s dreamed of what Aziraphale’s lips might taste like for so long, it seems almost unjust that the lingering tang of recorporation should hide that truth from Crowley.

Aziraphale pulls back from her, but stays close, breathing heavily, and _oh_ isn’t that a wonderful thought; they don’t need to breathe but Aziraphale is breathing heavily and that can only be because she wants to, she wants to have been affected by Crowley. That thought gives Crowley the courage to dart back in and drop another kiss upon her, lightning quick and chaste, but far more daring than she’s ever been before. She almost expects Aziraphale to jerk away, to realize what a mistake this is, to remind Crowley of Sides and how Aziraphale didn’t even like her anyway and—

“Your head is smoking, my dear,” Aziraphale says. She’s still close enough for her breath to warm Crowley’s face, for her to feel the way Aziraphale’s tongue shapes the air.

“What?”

Aziraphale laughs. It’s her real laugh, the one Crowley guiltily thinks of as her own because she’s never heard it in public. It begins with an indelicate snort and ends on a chuckle that could never be called ladylike. It’s real and open and _bless it_ but Crowley loves her so much.

“You’re thinking too hard.” Aziraphale steps back and turns toward Crowley’s building. “Come along, we’ve the whole night to decipher the prophecy and I think we’ve both waited quite long enough.”

“We just got it a few hours ago?” Crowley knew Aziraphale was a fan of prophecies, but surely a few hours wasn’t really ‘waiting long enough’?

“Oh, Crowley.”

* * *

Crowley's flat reeks of death and fear, the acrid taint of it sours Crowley's stomach even as she remembers the last moments she spent here earlier today.

_The Dark Council is very impressed with you._

Ha.

They might be impressed with her, but only enough to grant her the mercy of a quick death rather than a permanent stay in the deepest pit. Rebellion and betrayal are, after all, Hell's _raison d'etré_. They won't begrudge her that, but nor will it be tolerated unpunished.

"Right," she mumbles, realizing Aziraphale has frozen just inside the door. "I told you that-"

"You said some old friends were here," Aziraphale says and it's clear she's only just now remembering the conversation. "On— before that, on the street, you told me they knew it was you and they were going to— and then they were _here_ and I—"

"Didn't have a chance to do anything at all because I hung up on you." Crowley is far too tired to entertain self-recrimination. "Angel, I hung up on you, not the other way round."

She’s looking at the ansaphone and wondering if the Dread Sigil Odegra actually killed Hastur or just discorporated him when Aziraphale’s fingers find her own.

“Come on,” she says, smiling up at Crowley. The lines around her eyes are deep and for the first time Crowley thinks Aziraphale might be about as tired as she is herself. “I’m afraid I’m a bit too tired to clean…”

“Ligur,” Crowley fills in.

“Right.” Aziraphale pauses and Crowley can see the way she gathers the frayed ends of her nerves and holds them tight. It’s a skill she’s perfected over the last six millennia and one that Crowley’s never quite managed to emulate. The tremble at the corner of Aziraphale’s lips is barely even visible as she continues, “I’m a bit too tired to clean Ligur up tonight and I really would feel better if you were as far away from that as possible.”

Crowley blinks at her, looks between her and the melted puddle of Duke on the floor, and understanding trickles through the haze of exhaustion.

“I was careful,” she says and Aziraphale flinches, her fingers wending tighter around Crowley’s. “I promise. I wore gloves and an apron and the bucket was bought, not miracled.”

“Bucket?”

Crowley nods rapidly. “I put the water in a bucket and balanced it on top of the door like in—”

“Like in one of those Magic Lantern shows you’re so fond of.” Aziraphale’s voice is curiously steady.

“Ah, yes,” Crowley says, running her free hand through her hair and then wincing because she’s sticky and gritty and she smells like ash and death and _the bookshop had burned, Aziraphale wasn’t answering why won’t she answer where is she please don't leave me alone. I lov_ — Crowley wrenches her thoughts back to the present moment. “Like a cartoon.”

Aziraphale sniffs. Once. Twice. And Crowley’s a bit panicked because Aziraphale never cries, _never._ It’s one of the few constants Crowley can depend on when it seems everything else is always changing.

“Aziraphale,” she says, softly, _softly, if you’re gentle and kind then she’ll forget what you are._

The angel lifts her head and Crowley realizes that she’s laughing, the sniffs were suppressed snickers and now her eyes shine with half-overwrought mirth as a giggle escapes. Crowley stares and that seems to incite further laughter because the giggle gives way to a snort and then a chuckle and then Crowley’s snickering too and they’re learning on each other, each too overcome to stand on their own as their laughter fills the dark corners of Crowley’s flat.

Eventually the laughter peters away and they’re left standing there, smiling at each other dopily. Aziraphale’s eyes are still shining with mirth and Crowley gives in to the impulse to lift their joined hands to her lips, pressing a kiss to each and every one of Aziraphale’s knuckles. There are scars on them, relics of bygone eras when Aziraphale had taken up the sword, and Crowley finally gets to know what they feel like against her lips.

It’s better than even her wildest dreams.

“Thank you,” Aziraphale says. Crowley looks up at her through her eyelashes and hums a question, not quite willing to pull back enough to speak just yet. Aziraphale snorts indelicately. “Fiend,” she says, and Crowley can hear what she really means now. “I’m thanking you for being careful. You’ve no idea how afraid I was when you asked me for that.” She pauses and swallows, glancing away. “I’m terribly sorry about how I reacted, by the by. But, really, dear. A note with no other explanation?”

That’s enough for Crowley to lower Aziraphale’s hand, though she refuses to let go.

“I didn’t mean to worry you,” she says, brushing her thumb across the knuckles she’s just kissed. “I just, hm. I told you that my lot didn’t send rude notes. I’d gotten in a whole mess of trouble over that lunch in Paris and I was worried. It was never for me.”

Aziraphale visibly swallows.

“They hurt you?” she asks very, very quietly, the faintest of tremors in her voice.

Crowley shrugs because she’d promised herself long ago to never lie to Aziraphale if she could avoid it.

“Oh, Crowley.” Aziraphale is staring at their interlocked fingers.

“S’nothing to _oh, Crowley_ me about,” Crowley says, trying to diffuse the sudden tension that surrounds them. “Thought you knew, honestly.”

“You thought I knew you were afraid of being tortured again and still acted so boorishly?” The tremor is a full-blown wobble now and Crowley feels like this is all rapidly spinning out of her control.

“No?”

For a moment it looks like Aziraphale is about to cry and Crowley is blessing herself six ways to Sunday, and then Aziraphale sniffs and yanks Crowley forward by the hand, toppling the exhausted demon into her arms and clutching her tightly.

“I love you,” she says very firmly, “And I know that’s not something we’ve ever said before and I’ve behaved so terribly this week so you have no reason at all to believe me and that’s perfectly all right with me, my dear.” Crowley wants to say something but she feels like the entire world has just ground to a halt. “I don’t need you to say anything back or even to return the sentiment at all if you’re not —”

That is enough to snap Crowley from her daze. She jerks upright again—immediately missing the warm press of Aziraphale’s chest against her, the secure feeling of the angel’s arms around her—and jabs one finger firmly towards Aziraphale’s face.

“No! What the fuck, Aziraphale? Of course, I love you? Why wouldn’t I? I’ve only been trying to show you for the last three thousand fucking years and I—”

For the second time that night Aziraphale is kissing her, only this time Crowley recovers nearly immediately. Aziraphale’s tongue brushes her lips and Crowley opens for her, unable to stop the little moan that escapes when Aziraphale licks into her mouth. They’re closer than they’ve ever been and suddenly Crowley wants more. She’s still exhausted, but she’s got just enough left for this. Reluctantly, she pulls back, pausing to plant a quick kiss on the tip of Aziraphale’s nose when the angel protests.

“Bedroom?” Crowley asks, breathless with hope.

Aziraphale’s eyes widen fractionally and then she’s nodding, turning on her heel, and pulling Crowley along behind her. As soon as they reach the end of the bed Aziraphale spins back to Crowley and finally releases her hand. Crowley barely has time to feel bereft before Aziraphale is clutching her hips and kissing her again. She tastes like sweat and that terrible chapstick she insists on wearing no matter how many nice glosses Crowley ‘accidentally’ leaves at the bookshop and it’s the most perfect thing Crowley can imagine.

Or at least it is until Aziraphale pulls back and says, slightly out of breath, “You’ll tell me if I’m moving too quickly for you?”

Crowley sputters, trying to find the words to convey exactly how ridiculous that idea was. But Aziraphale’s brows are level and her eyes deadly serious, so instead of laughing Crowley nods.

“I promise, angel.”

Aziraphale’s serious expression clears and it’s like the sun breaking through the clouds. Crowley thinks she could survive eons on that smile alone. And then, Aziraphale pulls her down onto the bed, hands steady on her hips. The angel is shorter than Crowley, nearly a full handspan when Crowley bothers to stand up straight, but she’s always been so much _bigger_. Her heart, her light, her smile.

Her hands.

Her fingers don’t taper the same way Crowley’s do, they’re not ‘the hands of a pianist’ or whatever nonsense humans are saying these days. They’re strong. Crowley remembers watching Aziraphale hold a sword, her fingers calloused and scraped red. She remembers the way they’d wrapped around the rigging as Aziraphale laughed with Ching Shih, the two of them raising their voices in harmonies Crowley could never hope to match.

She remembers the way they felt pressed to the hollows of her throat in 1941 as the bombs fell on London and they forgot themselves for the space of three breaths.

They hold her tight now and as Aziraphale falls back, they guide Crowley down with her, catching her so none of her harsh angles clatter against the soft swells of perfection beneath her.

They land on the bed with a soft thump, and Crowley scrambles to make sure she’s not resting too much weight on Aziraphale. She only realizes after the fact that she’s managed to end up straddling Aziraphale’s lap, her knees pressed into the comforter and her hands on either side of Aziraphale’s head.

“Uh,” she manages. “I didn’t mean to- That is-”

Aziraphale laughs at her and leans up, pressing a quick kiss to Crowley lips and then falling back to her elbows, hands finally leaving Crowley’s hips bare.

“Now, Crowley dear,” she says with a smile, “You invited me to your bedroom, do you mean to say that you _don’t_ intend to ravish me?”

Crowley’s tongue has given up all pretense of humanity and she knows nothing more than incomprehensible noises will escape if she tries to speak.

“Oh, that is a shame.” Aziraphale’s smile turns positively devilish. Before Crowley can quite process what’s happened, the room is spinning around her and when she blinks she’s on her back and Aziraphale is lying atop her, chin resting on her sternum and eyes wide in faux-innocence. “I suppose that leaves the burden of ravishing to me, doesn’t it?”

“Angel,” Crowley manages, though it’s more a groan than a word.

“Yes, dear?”

Crowley claws her way towards coherence, fighting past the way Aziraphale’s thighs cage her own and the blaze of heat she can already feel at the angel’s core.

“You’re sure, right?” she asks and then, when Aziraphale frowns at her rushes to explain, “I mean I am, I’ve wanted this for so, so long and I love you and have you _seen_ yourself. I mean, fuck!” Aziraphale’s frown slips into something more indulgent and Crowley has to close her eyes to continue. “I don’t want you to do this if you’re not sure because I don’t think I can survive losing you right now and I don’t want you to take that to mean you have to or I’ll break or anything like that, I’m more than happy to keep on as we were! I thought you were—I thought I’d lost you earlier and I’d never have any of it again and I’m just, I don’t want—”

Aziraphale shifts her weight to free a hand and lays it gently across Crowley’s mouth.

“I am afraid I’ve been rather less open with you than I would prefer.” She takes her hand away and Crowley dares to open her eyes. Aziraphale is smiling down at her and Crowley’s always been helpless before that smile. Her own lips curve upward slightly. “In plain words, so you can’t tell yourself you misunderstood,” Crowley laughs a little at that because Aziraphale knows her so well, “I love you, with everything I have in me. I want to be by your side for as long as you’ll have me, however you’ll have me. I’ve wanted that for so very long, but I was afraid and I’m afraid I hurt you with my cowardice.”

“No! You were protecting us both,” Crowley protests, because no matter how it soothes the jagged cracks in her heart left by so many years of not being sure if her feelings were returned, she can’t tolerate Aziraphale saying cruel things about herself.

“Hm, yes, I was.” Aziraphale kisses the tip of Crowley’s nose and then her chin. Crowley whines until she kisses her mouth, a lingering slow press that only fans the flames in the pit of Crowley’s gut. Then, Aziraphale pulls back. “I was protecting us, but that doesn’t change the fact that I hurt you. I am terribly sorry for that, my love.”

“S’okay.”

“I promise you that I want this,” Aziraphale says, very firmly. “More than that, I promise you that I’ll always tell you if there’s anything I don’t want. You don’t need to worry about scaring me away, Crowley.” She pauses then and waits until Crowley nods.

“Good, now, if you’d be amenable, I’d rather like to, ah, eat you out? I believe that’s what the modern slang is?”

Crowley groans, throwing her head back to hide her grin. “I cannot believe you just said that!”

“What? Darling, you know I’m not what anyone could call inexperienced. I’ve done my fair share of larking.”

“Somehow that’s worse! How does it all sound so dirty when you say it?”

“I have no idea what you mean.” Aziraphale’s smile is wicked as she slides down Crowley’s body and presses a kiss to the front of Crowley’s pelvis. Her hips jerk involuntarily and suddenly she realizes that they’re both wearing far too many clothes for this.

She scrambles for the zip of her skin-tight jeans, fumbling the button three times before she manages to un-do it. Aziraphale hooks her fingers in Crowley’s belt loops and yanks downward, revealing that Crowley had foregone knickers when Miracling her clothes on that morning. She doesn’t bother to try and remove Crowley’s shoes, instead tapping expectantly on top of the left. She waits until Crowley flexes her toes and the snakeskin boots fade first to simple snakeskin and then to something human-adjacent.

Then, with Crowley entirely divested of covering below the waist, Aziraphale slides her hands up her legs. Crowley’s breath catches in her chest. Aziraphale’s hands are larger than her own, with strong, square fingers and scars across her knuckles and perfectly manicured fingernails that have sported a French tip since long before anyone on Earth knew what a French tip was. She draws them up Crowley’s legs achingly slowly, pausing halfway up her calves to brush one calloused thumb across the long scar that Crowley’s had since the Third Crusade.

She expects Aziraphale to move, to keep creeping higher, but the angel lingers. She’s bowed nearly in half and her face is turned downward, so Crowley can’t read the expression she wears.

“Azir-oh!” Crowley’s hand flies to her mouth as Aziraphale leans down and kisses the scar. Once, twice, three times before moving on. Now her hands’ explorations are joined by sporadic kisses, each a new bit of kindling on the fire within Crowley. One to each of her knees—right on top of the knobbliest, most unattractive bit—another on the freckle right in the center of Crowley’s left thigh, and finally a series of long, slow kisses trailing up her inner thighs.

“Crowley,” Aziraphale murmurs, the air from her mouth warm across the damp skin left behind by her ministrations. Crowley whines. She can feel Aziraphale’s smile against her. So close to where Crowley needs her.

“Please.” Her hands are hooked into the comforter to stop herself from tangling them in Aziraphale’s hair.

“Please what, dear?” Aziraphale has the gall to look up at Crowley as if she can’t see the effect of her efforts right in front of her face.

“Aziraphale, if you don’t fuck me right now, I will not be responsible for what I do!”

Aziraphale barks out a laugh. “Oh, well, in that case.”

Then, she does something rather clever with her damned perfect fingers and Crowley rather loses track of time.

* * *

Later, when they’re curled up together in the very center of the massive bed, naked and sated and more than a little sweaty, Aziraphale looks up at the ceiling and frowns. She disentangles one arm from Crowley’s and sweeps it in a broad arc, following the rise and fall of the sigils etched into the concrete above them. Crowley watches her through half-lidded eyes, feeling as if she might fall asleep at any moment.

“What are these?” Aziraphale eventually asks. Her arm drops back to the bed, landing with a thud on Crowley’s hip. Crowley wriggles a bit and Aziraphale takes the invitation to pull her still closer. She tucks her head down, resting it just below Aziraphale’s jaw, and lays a kiss on the faint arc of a collarbone.

“Hmm?”

“The symbols on your ceiling. At first I thought they were decoration because they’re not the right configuration for any sort of ward, but there’s a pattern to them. I just… can’t quite read it.”

“They’re to stop me getting summoned,” Crowley mumbles. “S’bloody exhausting. Added them after someone posted rituals on the internet. Got summoned four times in a month before I figured them out.”

Aziraphale’s hold tightens. Crowley can feel the tension running through her. Sleepily she reaches up and pats Aziraphale’s face. “Don’t worry, angel. No summonings since I redecorated.” Then, sensing that Aziraphale has more to say, she goes on, “We can talk about it later, after we figure out that prophecy, yeah?”

That does the trick.

“Of course,” Aziraphale says. “Go to sleep, I’ll be here when you wake.”

Crowley slips into darkness.

* * *

**1**

* * *

There are times, when the sun sinks low over the hills and the shallow angle the light cuts through the atmosphere weakens it to nearly nothing, that Crowley wonders if she Fell at all. It's an odd thought for a demon to have when sitting there, her scaled feet trailing through cool grasses and her serpentine eyes narrowed against the dying light. But, well.... she's never been able to help her thoughts—they're more rebellious than even her tongue (which is saying quite a bit, as the concept of 'backtalk' had not existed before Crowley).

So, she sits and she thinks and she touches the grass and she wonders if she really Fell because surely, _surely_ she would not be granted this peace had she plummeted so permanently from God's good favor. Surely, she'd not be allowed the feel of the late summer grass between her toes or the damp sweat that trailed down the glass of water in her hand.

She'd not be permitted the thrill of annoyance that it was only water in that glass when she'd asked her angel for a drink and who really drank water anyway?

She'd not be graced, surrounded, enraptured, filled by the unending torrent of Aziraphale's love.

Because surely that was too great a gift for someone who had Fallen.

She thinks these things as she watches Aziraphale talk to the overeager young men who'd ridden up on bikes nearly ten minutes prior, their King James clutched in hands all too ready to bend, break, rend the truth from its moorings. They look like nice enough young men; the taller of the two certainly appreciates Aziraphale's deadpan humor and flustered good nature, if his smile is to be trusted at all. Crowley wonders if she should give them the benefit of the doubt, if she should go inside and pick up that pitcher of strawberry-infused water Aziraphale always keeps chilled in hopes that the mail carrier will one day agree to have a drink and chat.

She doesn’t stand.

She’s up the hill a ways, just far enough that if Aziraphale is annoyed at her for being anti-social later she can claim ignorance and probably get away with it. She watches as the taller man laughs and steps just a little bit closer to Aziraphale, tilting his head so it's clear he only wants to be able to hear her better. It’s transparently flirtatious but harmless and Crowley feels that same curl of pleasure she’s always felt when people appreciate Aziraphale. It’s not proprietary or anything like that; she wants Aziraphale to be happy and loved by the people she herself so loves, and far too often they fall short of that.

(Crowley’s instinctive thought is that she too falls short, but they’ve been working on fighting that sort of knee-jerk self-loathing. Crowley hates it, mostly doesn’t feel worthy of the effort, but the look on Aziraphale’s face when she tangibly improves is worth all the discomfort the process brings.)

The breeze picks up just a bit as the sun sinks lower. Crowley’s wearing her gardening clothes, which had started life the richest black and are now faded by the sun to something closer to dove grey. The armpits are stained because Aziraphale can never seem to resist Crowley’s temptations when she smells like hard work. Her legs and feet are bare below the biker shorts she wears specifically to elicit her favorite variation of “Oh good Lord, Crowley!” Summer’s drawing to a close, she’ll need to start wearing more sooner rather than later. But, for now, Crowley presses her big toe to the grass and pushes off with just enough force to set the swing in motion. She loves this swing. Just after they moved here, Crowley spent an entire day as a snake, winding her way through the branches that now stretch above her, searching for the best and strongest among them. When it was found, she gave the entire tree a stern talking to and then snapped the swing into existence below the strong branch.

She hears Aziraphale laugh again, but this time it’s not quite as free. Crowley drags her gaze back around from the building clouds to the small group at the bottom of the hill. The sun has continued to sink and Crowley wishes they'd be gone already; she wants to watch the stars come out with Aziraphale by her side. Annoyed, she pulls off her sunglasses and tosses them to the side. If they know what's good for them they'll land on her bedside table, perfectly folded and cleaned and waiting for her to put them on in the morning.

The last rays of sun are hitting her face and she knows what they make her look like, how they catch her serpent eyes, and she knows how to use that.

She waits until the first man leans just a little too far into Aziraphale’s space, until the angel is shifting back, smile faltering and hands twisting, and then Crowley stands. As she’d known it would, her movement, sudden and large where there had been only slow stillness before, draws the men’s gazes. The first, the one making Aziraphale uncomfortable, gives Crowley a onceover and dismisses her, turning back to Aziraphale. But, the second is cleverer. He looks at Crowley and he _sees._

He sees the tension in her shoulders and the dangerous set to her hips.

He sees the way she angles towards them all without moving at all.

He sees her eyes.

His own widen and he tugs on his partner’s sleeve, jerking one thumb back over his shoulder. The other tries to ignore him, but he glances at Crowley again and is insistent. Eventually, he gets his point across and they depart, leaving Aziraphale at the garden gate and Crowley at the swing.

The clever one glances back over his shoulder once. Crowley is sure to give him a measured look, one that serves as both acknowledgement of his wise choice and a warning not to return.

He turns away from her and hurries to catch up with his partner.

Crowley smiles and settles back onto the swing to wait for Aziraphale to join her and watch the sunset.

She does so enjoy protecting her angel, for all that the most dangerous thing they face these days is over-eager proselytizers.

* * *

**-5**

* * *

There is a time, long ago, when she doesn't know Aziraphale very well yet. They're only a scarce few decades out from a wing in the rain when they meet once more in the desert. It’s all desert in those days, though the humans seem to do well enough at finding what they need to live. They’re so good at finding the hidden places where water flows, the safe havens, scattered like droplets of Eden across the sands, where they can rest a while.

When Aziraphale finds her, Crowley is placing the last of the rapid blossoms from a rare desert rain atop the sharp pile of stones that comprises Abel's grave.

"I don't understand," Aziraphale laments. "They were both such sweet boys, how could he—" she stops and swallows heavily.

"It's like,” Crowley whispers, touching the sunrise pink blossom of Adam's favorite flower with the tip of her index finger, "like you want something. So badly your wings ache for _wanting_ , and you're sure, _sure_ , that if you don't get that thing you'll cease to exist. Have you ever felt that?" Crowley glances at Aziraphale and then quickly away again when she catches the flash of oasis-blue eyes seeking her own fetid, rot-yellow. She's suddenly parched and she doesn't know why.

"No," Aziraphale says and it breaks something loose deep in Crowley's hollow chest. "I haven't ever felt that. I don't think angels are capable of such things."

Crowley shudders against the fingers of cool breeze that pick at her elbows and the backs of her knees.

"Of course not," she mutters instead of saying what she wants to say which is "oh, how nice for you. Me? Me, I'm starving, ravenous, famished, my stomach is a figment of a thought and yet it consumes itself because there is nothing in existence that I have found that will fill me."

She wonders if she'll ever get used to the hunger, if it'll ever fade to join the rest of the voices in the background radiation of her mind. She's not sure she wants it to, it hurts and she hates it, hates Heaven for what they did to her, for what they took from her.

But.

But, Cain had been hungry, too. Except, he'd found the thing that sated his hunger and now his brother is dead.

Crowley doesn't think she can stand to lose anything else.

* * *

**3**

* * *

The emptiness gnaws at Crowley now, chewing, breaking, seething in her empty gut. Sometimes when the young man enters the room a breeze follows behind, close on his heels and carrying the smell of damp earth and new growth.

Aziraphale had been planning to make a strawberry-rhubarb pie, Crowley remembers when she tastes the loam on the air, ingredients fresh from Crowley's garden. Aziraphale had helped her pick them and her hands had been so gentle as she carefully washed the muck of their beginnings from them in the kitchen sink. The dirt, the imperfections, all gone in swirls down the drain.

Sometimes Crowley loves Aziraphale so much her head spins.

When she strains to remember past the dark and gloom, Crowley thinks she might have knocked the bowl of strawberries to the ground. That sounds right. They'd be bruised and unusable now.

She's hungry for those strawberries and for the smell of the dirt as it coiled down the sink and for the little smile that always curls Aziraphale's lips as she rolls out the crust.

"What do you want with me?" She hasn't wanted to ask it, hasn't wanted to know for sure how long she'll be alone for, how much longer the emptiness will have to grow. She’s no longer accustomed to the feeling, so used to glutting herself on Aziraphale’s love.

The man doesn’t answer. He’s pacing around the outside of the circle, six steps to the left, a pause, and then eight to the right. It’s been driving her mad; the uneven count means that he makes a slow circuit all the way around her, despite pacing to and fro. The number of steps at least gives Crowley some idea of how large the space the circle occupies. Eighteen steps around, the man isn’t tall. From where she’d sat at the top of the hill Crowley thinks he’d been around Aziraphale’s height.

She struggles to think through the haze that clings to her thoughts.

Aziraphale’s fingers had caught on the woven band of ribbon around Crowley’s wrist that morning, reeling her back into bed. She’d kissed Crowley, her breath tasting like mint despite not yet rising from the warm cocoon of their covers. Crowley had laughed, kissed her lips again, and then her forehead because kissing on the lips was wonderful, really it was, it lit a fire in Crowley’s belly like nothing else in all of Creation, but they’d been denied every form of affection for so long. Crowley yearned to lay kisses on every part of Aziraphale so that she might never again feel herself unloved, no matter if Crowley was there to remind her or not.

Eighteen steps.

Crowley peels herself up from the floor. She pulls her legs in, tucking them tight against her narrow chest.

Eighteen steps and around Aziraphale’s height.

The muscles of her back ache, but that’s not enough room to call forth her wings. The distant, waking part of her mind knows that there’s no use in doing that anyway. She’d be just as trapped with them out as she is now. But there’s a certain comfort in knowing that if the man ever deigned to cross the carved sigils she’d be ready.

“Do you really think you can do it?” Crowley asks, unable to stop herself, half terrified and half dreadfully curious. Temptation had been her job, after all, and Crowley herself was always the perfect mark for her work.

The man’s steps do not falter: six to the left, pause, eight to the right.

I want to go home. 

That one she manages to not say, though she has to bite nearly through her tongue to stop the words in their tracks.

I want to know if Aziraphale burned the crust again.

Crowley hugs her legs tighter to her chest, pressing her forehead to her too-knobbly knees.

Six steps.

Pause.

Eight.

* * *

**6**

* * *

There is a myth that Crowley has always enjoyed because it’s the source of no end of debates between her and Aziraphale, and she does so love to watch the angel’s cheeks flush with irritation as she sniffs and tries to act as if she hasn’t just realized that she agrees with Crowley.

The myth starts with an apple.

No. Wait. It starts long before that.

There’s a little girl. Some versions of the myth say that she is beautiful, but neither Crowley nor Aziraphale like those versions. They prefer the ones that say the girl is clever or quick-fingered or stubborn; Aziraphale always had a fondness for the versions that call her stubborn. The little girl is always born to a family that loves her and then leaves. Death, war, comeuppance for some past wrong-doing, the details vary and are unimportant.

All that matters is that the little girl grows up alone.

Sometimes, when they’re telling tales by firelight and the wine flows freely between them, Crowley dares to suggest that the little girl only survives because there’s an angel there to look out for her. Aziraphale always blushes and retorts that surely she’d be better served by a resourceful demon, because everyone knows angels are pants at taking care of children. 

The little girl grows up alone but not lonely and that’s important, too. She’s never seen another human person, but she learns to eat berries that don’t make her sick by watching the deer, how to wash her food before eating from the raccoons, and, from the wolves, where the warmest places to outlast the night can be found.

She’s never worn clothes a day in her life and her cave-dark hair is wild, a tangle around her shoulders because she’d discovered how to tie little knots in it and gotten a bit carried away.

She’s happy.

That’s also important.

The little girl grows, wild and clever and stubborn, and soon she’s not a little girl anymore, but a young woman.

The young woman’s legs are longer than the little girl’s and they carry her farther than ever before. She learns how to weave grasses into pouches and ropes to carry food and water with her and then she lets her long legs and sturdy feet carry her away from the small wood in which she’s lived her entire life. As she runs, she sings, not words because she doesn’t know how to speak as a human might. She copies the warbling melodies of the birds who’d nested above the soft grasses she slept in, the chattering whistle of the sparrows she always shared her berries with, the lonesome howl of the wolves who’d begun to keep their distance as she grew taller than them.

She runs and she runs and eventually the ground beneath her feet changes. Soft grass gives way to strange small pebbles, laid out in great flowing rivers that look too even to be natural. The girl is intrigued because she’s always been curious and she loves finding new things and picking at them until they reveal their secrets to her. So, she follows the strange river, though she does not step upon it because her feet are bare and it hurts to walk upon.

She’ll learn later in life that the things others like her make always hurt to walk upon, for they were never designed for feet like hers. But that’s later.

Now, she follows and she follows and when she grows tired she searches out small clusters of trees where she might lay herself down and hum the songs the nightbirds had sung until she falls asleep.

The young woman travels for days and days and eventually she finds it.

The myth starts with an apple.

That’s a part that Crowley and Aziraphale always argue about, because the myth starts with an apple but the story does not and Crowley thinks that that’s important[3].

One day, weary because her path had taken her over hills and valleys and her pace had never slowed, the young woman comes upon a strange forest. The trees are all of one type, strangely short and gnarled, despite looking healthy. They are arranged in long, even rows, with enough space between them that the branches never touch or intermingle. Something about the place sends a shiver of fear down the young woman’s spine because this doesn’t look right. Trees were never meant to be alone; their branches are meant to brush against each other, their roots to tangle together. This is a plentiful land and they need not worry about space or growing too large or not getting enough water.

And yet these trees did not touch.

The young woman hesitates. She has yet to cross the strange river because it hurts to stand upon, but the trees are on the other side and she is dreadfully curious.

Just then, the sun comes out from behind the clouds and brilliant light falls across the trees and the young woman sees them.

Bright, round _things._ Fruit, she’s sure of that much, maybe very large berries? She’s never seen their like before.

Her weary legs tremble and her stomach growls and the young woman takes a deep breath.

New knowledge is worth a little pain.

She takes her first step onto the sharp river, biting her bottom lip against the sensation. Then, she takes another and another and another. Remember, the young woman is stubborn and curious and clever and she wants to know what that fruit is, if she can eat it, what it tastes like, what it feels like in her mouth.

The moment is always Crowley’s favorite, even as it makes Aziraphale sad. They’ve always had different views on what should be risked for a good apple.

The young woman makes it across the river, but she does not stop. Halfway across she’d begun to run and now she lets that momentum carry her past the first row of trees, and the second, until she comes to the third and slides to a stop. Her feet ache and her legs still shake beneath her, but there’s a sort of satisfaction to that feeling now.

She smiles up at the strange red fruit.

She’s just reaching up to take the lowest of them, when she hears the voice. It’s something like the quiet chuff of a wolf tasked with caring for the pups while the others hunt, but louder. Like the chitter of a racoon to another as they squabble of the same smooth stone in the creek, but with none of the friendly care.

She looks around, tilting her head this way and that to hear better, but sees nothing amiss.

The young woman plucks an apple from the tree and holds it in her hands. It’s cool, heavier than she’d expected, and she likes the way the skin feels under her thumbs as she turns it around and around.

Here, the myth diverges again. Some versions tell of the witch who emerges from the trees, still shouting that these are her apples and she’ll curse any who pluck them. She sees the young woman standing there, apple picked, naked as the day is long, hair wild. And, fearful of the unknown, the witch holds true to her word.

In those versions, the young woman falls to the ground without ever tasting the flesh of the apple.

Crowley hates those versions. 

She much prefers the ones where the young woman gets to take a bite. Her teeth sink into the flesh and the juices run down her hands. It’s sweeter than she expects and before she’s even chewed the first bite, she’s taking another. In the versions of the story Crowley likes best, the young woman gets to finish the apple and, full of the knowledge that she can have favorites, that some things taste better than others and she’s found the best of them all, she’s reaching for a second when the witch arrives.

The myth never ends well for the young woman[4].

That’s another reason Crowley and Aziraphale like to argue about it; they both know that if they argue about the early things, they’ll not reach the end. They’ll not have to relive the story of the young woman who only wanted to know what things were like over there, who only wanted to taste the apple, and who was punished without understanding the laws under which she’d been born.

Crowley’s skin always itches if they reach that part, and Aziraphale is prone to making the sort of guilt-ridden expression that usually drives Crowley to minor acts of larceny[5]. So, they avoid it by arguing about if humans actually can learn to sing like birds or if the wolves would have just eaten her.

It’s easier that way.

Safer.

But, the knowledge of the end of the myth lingers. It can’t be forgotten. The young woman eats the apple, learns something, and is struck down for it. Millennia later humans will find this version of the story unpalatable; they’ll make up some nonsense about her only falling asleep and being rescued by a handsome prince who carries her away to his castle and teaches her about the glory of clothes and having your hair brushed. Crowley hates that version because she loves the idea of the wild woman, happy as she has made herself and wanting nothing more than that.

Of course, Crowley never gets what she wants and the story slowly loses all the bits that ring true for Aziraphale and Crowley, sanitized and civilized until there’s only Snow White with her perfect black hair that had never been tied in knots by the clever fingers of a little girl who could sing like a bird.

But the apple stays.

Crowley thinks sometimes that she’s doomed to be haunted by apples for the rest of her days.

Maybe that was part of her punishment. Crawl on your belly in the dust and taste only ash and also every story you love will begin and end with apples.

She wakes in the circle, her skin frozen to the granite below her, with the taste of apples on her tongue and the thought that perhaps her own story is meant to end with apples as well. Is it a strong enough literary motif for her to taste them as she dies? Or should she beg Prosper for an apple. Tell him she’s the serpent of Eden and prostrate herself before him, saying that she’ll leave the body she’s stolen if only he gives her a single slice of apple before she goes.

Crowley is tired. She realizes now that there’s something in the sigils that’s eating away at her. They reflect back and around and that’s why she can’t see or hear or taste anything but apples when Prosper isn’t around, because there’s nothing but her in the circle so there’s nothing to perceive.

She doesn’t think she’d be strong enough to chew it anyway. 

It’s not fair, she thinks, to use her own strength against her like this. Not sporting. She should tell Prosper the next time he comes here. That if he’s truly upstanding, a righteous man and all that tosh, he’ll use the energy of the leylines or something like that instead of his captive.

She doesn’t think she’ll be strong enough to say any of that.

She curled around herself, still in a human corporation, barely, but twisted as if she were a snake. It’s comfortable, as much as anything can be comfortable in this place[6]. She twitches her legs, drawing them in tighter. She wants to forget she has legs, arms, ribs, any of them because they all hurt.

The emptiness in her gut has crept outward, through her veins and capillaries, hollowing her out as it goes until she feels like a soap bubble, only held in place by the surface tension of a single thought.

Aziraphale will cry if Crowley’s not here when she arrives.

Crowley hates to see Aziraphale cry.

So, she lingers.

Eventually, even the discomfort of her corporation fades away and Crowley is nothing more than an awareness of an awareness. A novelist in the 18th century would like her, she thinks blearily, just meta enough for them to really sink their pretentious teeth into.

There’s a stab of something, a shift, as if the world is rocking around her and Crowley realizes that someone is touching her.

A hand on her shoulder, sliding down her arm to pin her wrists to the stone, fingers around her throat, a voice in her ears.

“Fucking demonic bitch.” It slips through her like a knife. The sort of voice people trust. The sort of voice that gets called ‘a nice young man’ no matter what he says, no matter what he does. Crowley hates it, though she can’t summon why just then.

“You really had to go and die? Instead of just leaving, you decided to kill Ms. Fell’s wife?”

The hand on her neck tightens and Crowley wishes she had the energy to squirm, to pull away or to bite. She can feel the press of the hand against the ribbon around her wrist and it fills her with rage. She’s never liked being held down, not like this, and she feels so ephemeral already, it’s like the voice and the hand are snipping through the last threads of life that she’s managed to weave through herself.

She tries to protest, to squirm away, to turn into a snake and bite that hand and listen to that voice scream and scream and scream. But she doesn’t have the energy for any of that.

The hand presses harder. Crowley knows that if she still breathed she’d be struggling now, fighting for each molecule past the constriction.

“What the— e-” There’s a note of wonder to the voice now. Crowley sees the shifting light before she realizes that her eyes are open just a bit.

“Stop pretending!” The Nice-Young-Man says, hand tightening yet further. “I saw your eyes move!”

Crowley can’t stop doing something she never started doing. Give it a few seconds, she thinks, not long left now.

A few threads left. Frayed. Thin and broken.

It was hard to sew two pieces of knitwear together. Crowley had never got the hang of it, her clumsy fingers always slipping into the holes between stitches.

That’s all she is now. Gauzy knit, too thin yarn with too large needles. More empty space than fabric.

“I’ll thank you, Mr. Day, to let go of my wife’s neck.”

The hand is gone and so is Crowley.

She hopes, as she falls away from everything, that Aziraphale doesn’t realize how close she was to making it. Hopes she thinks Crowley died ages ago. That seems less cruel than the truth.

* * *

**-2**

* * *

They kiss for the first time in a church. Later, Crowley will appreciate the irony. She’ll be sitting on the couch in the backroom of the bookshop, watching Aziraphale try to herd a particularly stubborn pair of pensioners out without parting with one of her Brontës, and she’ll start laughing because _shit, angel, a church!_

But, in the moment, all Crowley can think is ‘oh!’

She’d hoped her dramatic rescue would earn her a smile, perhaps if she was very lucky, the press of a single hand to her chest. A touch that she could remember on lonely nights when all she wanted was Aziraphale at her side.

So, when she heard that there was a bookseller getting the wool pulled over her eyes, she ingratiated herself with the various organizations involved in espionage in London. She’d been clever and cool and she soon had a reputation as one of the best and when it was time for the big reveal, she’d danced down the aisle like a fucking ninny because she’d forgotten that consecrated ground bloody well hurts.

But, it was worth it. It would have been worth it if all that happened was killing a few Nazis and earning a genuine smile from her favorite person in creation. Crowley would have been happy with that, gone back out to her car and patted the hood and said, “Well, girl, let’s go home. That was a good night’s work.”

Instead, Aziraphale is kissing her.

It’s universe-altering.

Well, no. That’s a tad dramatic. It’s actually quite a bit more toothy than Crowley imagined when she thought about kissing Aziraphale.

It happens like this:

Aziraphale is standing at the altar of a church and Crowley is dancing towards her[7]. Crowley says some terribly clever things and accidentally reveals that she’s chosen a new human alias because it turns out that spies like people who go by more than one name. ‘Antonia’ still feels odd, but Crowley likes the sound of ‘Tony’ a lot, so she's willing to give the whole thing time.

Then, the Nazis do as Nazis are wont to do and make a stupid decision[8] and quick as you like, they’re nothing more than smears on the stones around them.

Nazi blood has a way of de-consecrating things, so Crowley’s able to walk more comfortably over to where the bag of books is still clutched in the one remaining solid Nazi appendage. She wrestles it away and turns back to Aziraphale.

“Little demonic miracle of my own,” she says. Or rather, she’s planning on saying. She only gets as far as, “Little demonic mira—” before Aziraphale has thrown herself across the scant distance between them and is kissing her, their teeth clacking together painfully and their noses jobbing each other’s cheeks.

“Ow! Bloody heaven, angel,” Crowley says, pulling back and rubbing at her cheek with her free hand. Then, she realizes exactly what just happened.

“Ngk,” she says and Aziraphale laughs.

“Charming as ever, my dear.” She steps close and pulls the books from Crowley’s hand, setting them on the ground at their feet, before standing back up and slotting her hands into place around Crowley’s narrow hips. The swell of her belly just barely brushes against Crowley’s own and Crowley thinks she might just discorporate.

“Aziraphale, I —”

“Crowley.” They speak at the same time and then trail off, each grinning stupidly at the other.

“I’d rather like to try that again,” Aziraphale finally says, when it’s clear that Crowley won’t be trying again. “I was, perhaps, a bit overenthusiastic the first time.”

“A bit? Nearly broke my damn nose.”

“Quite,” Aziraphale sniffs, eyes sparkling. She reaches up and tilts Crowley’s head towards her, kissing the bridge of her nose. “There,” she says, “All better.”

Then, before Crowley can do anything at all, she’s kissing her again. On the lips this time, slower than before, but insistent, and Crowley’s lost. She’s been lost for centuries, millennia, and she’d thought she was alone all that time. Finding out that she’s not, that Aziraphale is right there beside her?

She whimpers into the kiss and then, overcome, she pulls back and buries her head in the soft crook of Aziraphale’s neck. The angel’s arms encircle her and hold her tight and no matter how much her feet hurt, Crowley has never felt safer.

“Missed you,” she mumbles, because it’s true. Then, silently because she’s not quite ready to say it aloud, “I love you,” and that’s true as well, for all that it’s only in her mind.

“I missed you, as well, my dear.” Aziraphale presses a kiss to the crown on Crowley’s head.

Crowley starts to say something else, but she shifts wrong and all that comes out is a long, pained hiss. The adrenaline has stopped pumping through her corporation and suddenly all the pain she’s been ignoring is sweeping through her. Aziraphale gives her a long look before her eyes widen and she looks, horrified, at Crowley’s feet.

“Crowley!”

“Aziraphale,” Crowley drawls, still trying to keep even a shred of dignity, though now she’s practically hanging off of Aziraphale’s shoulders.

“You damned fool,” Aziraphale bites out. She maneuvers Crowley around and frees one hand, snapping impatiently.

Dizzily Crowley looks around to realize that they’re in the bookshop. The bag of books is sitting on the armchair where Aziraphale normally sits and the fact that she’d brought them along, even when annoyed at Crowley, is so deeply charming that Crowley can’t help but grin broadly up at her.

“I’m going to go get some water and rags,” Aziraphale says, stepping back and wringing her fingers together fretfully. “I expect you to be exactly as I’ve left you when I return.”

Crowley gives her a sloppy salute and watches her leave. As soon as she’s out of sight, her fingers rise to her lips.

Aziraphale liked her.

Oh, Antichrist.

 _Aziraphale liked her._

* * *

**10**

* * *

“No, absolutely not.”

Crowley wants to roll her eyes, but she hears the fear in Aziraphale’s voice, the subtle tremor and twist that say she’s genuinely worried and not just putting on a show. Sometimes she does that, says no or that she’d rather not do something entirely so Crowley can convince her otherwise. But, never here.

Never when they’re naked and wrapped around each other, the whole world reduced to nothing more than the space between their chests and the movement of their bodies.

“Aziraphale, I...,” Crowley trails off, unsure of how to continue. She knows she’d feel the same as Aziraphale, were the positions reversed. If Aziraphale had been taken from her and hurt and nearly killed and was now asking what Crowley was asking… Of course, Crowley understands her refusal.

“No, Crowley.” Aziraphale shifts, pulling back and up so she’s leaning against the headboard instead of lying. Crowley moves with her and they settle with Aziraphale leaned back and Crowley half draped across her lap, curled as tightly around Aziraphale as her still recovering corporation can manage.

The flannel sheets pool around them and Crowley can’t help but hate them a little. She misses the cool slide of silk against bare skin, misses the days before that feeling sent her stupid heart into overdrive and left her feeling as if she couldn’t catch a breath, no matter that she didn’t need to breathe in the first place.

“Why?” Crowley finally asks, thinking that maybe if she knows the shape of Aziraphale’s discomfort she can soothe it away.

Aziraphale clutches her close, tucks her head into the shadowed hollow of Crowley’s collarbone and wraps her arms around Crowley. Aziraphale’s hand is splayed across the small of Crowley’s back, and despite the weeks that have passed since Crowley awoke in their home, far away from the granite and dark, she still feels worn thin. The skin that stretches across the bones of her spine beneath Aziraphale’s hand is closer to ricepaper than flesh and blood.

Crowley has never especially liked her corporation. She doesn’t dislike it either. Usually she feels ambivalent, viewing it as a thing that she puts on and can reshape to her needs, the same as any other bit of clothes. But, it feels more real when Aziraphale is touching it and Crowley hates that Prosper has made it feel fragile, has robbed her of her ability to trust that her body will not fail her.

Sometimes, in the long dark of the night, Crowley lies awake and stares at the shadows the moon and stars cast, reminding herself over and over that she can see them, that they’re really there and not a hallucination. Sometimes, when she’s woken from a nightmare, she’s convinced that she can only see them because he’s there, somewhere, and soon she’ll hear his over-sympathetic voice again.

“You’ve stolen her,” he’ll say, “She can’t really love you and you know it, it’s all a lie.”

“Crowley?”

She shakes her head, trying to dispel those thoughts and drag herself back into the present moment. She’s not making her case well.

“Sorry,” she mutters, “Drifted. What’d you say?”

Aziraphale purses her lips but seems to understand that Crowley won’t take kindly to her question being dismissed.

“I said that I don’t see how me acting like that terrible man does you any good at all. I’d prefer not to be thought of alongside him at all, I think.” Aziraphale speaks slowly, still clearly figuring out where her visceral negative response had come from.

“But that’s not— I mean, I’m not— Erg,” Crowley struggles to find the words. She closes her eyes and thinks of the way it had felt at the end, of the helplessness and the hand around her wrists and neck, of the surety that she’d never see her wife again, never again kiss her good morning or laugh as she discovered what new chaos Crowley had wrought on her bookshelves.

“It’s like I’m still there,” she finally says, thinking of the long hours in the middle of the night when Aziraphale’s breath beside her turns to Prosper’s and the creaks of their old cottage sound like his steps pacing around her, six and pause and eight. “I know I’m not, obviously. But, it feels like I am because I can’t stop counting or searching or whatever the fuck it is I’m doing because I can still feel….” She doesn’t want to say it, doesn’t want Aziraphale to worry more than she already does.

“You had bruises around your wrists,” Aziraphale whispers. “You flinched away from me in your sleep for days.”

Crowley hadn’t known that and _oh_ does it hurt. She hates that she made Aziraphale feel this way.

“Yeah, I did,” she says, in lieu of an apology she knows Aziraphale will never accept.

They sit in silence for a long time. The early evening light has shifted through gold and around to a wan, grey-ish blue before Aziraphale speaks again.

“You really want me to?” she asks, “You really think it will help you?”

“Only if you want to,” Crowley murmurs back. She’s lazily playing with the short hair at the back of Aziraphale’s skull, enjoying the sensation of it against her fingers, smooth in one direction, prickly in the other, back and forth, it’s almost meditative.

Aziraphale’s arms tighten around her once more.

“If I’d asked you before all this, would you have said yes?”

Aziraphale sighs.

“Yes,” she says. “I would have said yes.”

Crowley dips her head and kisses Aziraphale, tilting her up with a crooked finger below her chin. She draws it out, nipping at Aziraphale’s bottom lip just to hear her whimper.

“It would have been fun, yeah?” she whispers when she pulls away, half-hoarse with desire. “You still have those fancy ropes you think I don’t know about. I’d pull and struggle and you’d get to have your way with me.”

Aziraphale shifts beneath her.

“You vile temptress,” she says but she’s smiling and Crowley’s able to dash away the echo of Prosper on her voice.

“That’s it,” she says before she quite means to speak. Aziraphale looks at her and she’s forced to explain. “He said that—No! No, it’s not a bad thing. I promise.” Aziraphale freezes where she’d begun to pull away, eyeing Crowley warily. “You’re the loudest voice in any room I’m in, Aziraphale. If you say the things or do the things, then I’m going to remember you, not anyone else who might have said or done those things.”

A bit more of the remaining tension leaves Aziraphale’s face.

“You really do say the nicest things,” she says and Crowley squawks a protest because she knows she’s meant to.

“It’s not hard.” She drops a kiss on Aziraphale’s cheek and then the other, “There’s a lot to say nice things about.”

“Not just yet,” Aziraphale tells her. “I’m saying yes, but not just yet, my love.” When Crowley looks at her she sees the dark circles under her eyes and thinks about the way she can’t stand to be in a separate room for more than a few minutes, about how violently she’d jumped when someone rang their bike bell as they passed[9]. 

“I love you,” Crowley says. Aziraphale smiles at her and Crowley thinks viciously that they’re going to be okay because they’re both too fucking stubborn to be anything but.

“And I you, Crowley.”

“Good.” Crowley grins at her. “That would have been embarrassing for me otherwise.”

This startles a laugh from Aziraphale and something else slots back into place in Crowley’s chest. 

* * *

**0**

* * *

“The strawberries are nearly ripe, dear,” Aziraphale calls from the other side of the garden.

“They better be!” Crowley looks up from issuing muttered threats to the wild hedge of blackberries she’s graciously allowed to continue existence despite the way it intrudes on the ordered aesthetic of her garden. Aziraphale is still crouched down where Crowley can’t see her, so she sets her basket on the ground and trots over.

“Oh, Crowley, were you threatening them again?” Aziraphale sighs. “I don’t like when my baking tastes afraid.”

“Only a little. They weren’t up to snuff and I knew you wanted to use them today.” Crowley busies herself with the strawberries, plucking only the best and laying them on the folded cheesecloth in the bottom of the basket crooked over Aziraphale’s arm. When she looks up, Aziraphale is smiling at her tenderly.

“You’re still wearing the ribbons, angel.” Crowley says, to stop herself from saying anything more foolish (she’s never quite got the hang of not being totally and entirely besotted with her wife).

Aziraphale reaches up and pats at her head before laughing. They’d spent the previous day at the village’s Midsummer Festival and Aziraphale had been the proud recipient of a messily woven ribbon headband from a gaggle of children.

“So I am.” Crowley watches as she takes it off and deftly unbraids the ribbons, separating them into two sets of matching colors. She gestures for Crowley’s hand and, when Crowley holds it up for her, quickly re-braids half of the ribbons into a loose fitting cuff around Crowley’s wrist.

“There!” She says, eyes bright. Crowley stares at the cuff, throat feeling strangely tight. Her skin is pale and dirt splotched around it and the colors are bright, cheery in an almost garish way. She runs one finger along the edge.

“Of course,” Aziraphale says, smile still clear in her voice, “if it’s too bright for you, you don’t have to—”

“Shut up, of course I’m wearing it.” Crowley jerks her hand back, cradling it to her chest as she glares at the utter bastard she married. She jerks her chin at the other half of the ribbons. “What’re you doing with those?”

Aziraphale hums. “I was thinking of—”

A cheery bike bell interrupts her and Crowley groans. “Again, Aziraphale? Haven’t you and these sanctimonious assholes talked yourselves out yet?”

Aziraphale laughs. “There’s always more to talk about, dear.” She stands and brushes her knees off. “Don’t worry, we’ll have plenty of time later.”

Crowley rolls her eyes but gives her a quick peck on the cheek before beating a rapid retreat up towards the apple tree with the swing at the top of the hill.

She hates listening to proselytizers.

“Ms. Fell!” she hears the younger call out happily as she goes, “It’s so nice to see you again!”

Maybe she’ll have time for a quick nap before Aziraphale gets bored with them. Crowley swings her arms at her side and the cuff brushes her trouser leg and she smiles.

It really is shaping up to be a wonderful afternoon.

* * *

1. Take _that,_ Heisenberg.↩

2. Crowley laughs the first time he says that, long and loud and bordering on the sort of hysterical that might have had God-fearing townsfolk whispering about gathering the witch-burning supplies in centuries past.↩

3. Aziraphale does too, but she likes the way Crowley’s face looks when she’s passionate about something and this is such a little thing to argue about.↩

4. They both have something to say about that particular trend in folklore, where curious young women are punished for the same things for which young men are hailed as heroes, but that sort of talk requires more tequila than Aziraphale usually keeps in the bookshop so it’s rare.↩

5. More than a few priceless tomes had entered the angel’s collection after these sorts of discussions. Silent apologies from a demon who did not realize that Aziraphale was feeling guilty for not acting differently eons before, not upset about anything in the moment.↩

6. Which means that it’s not comfortable at all, but it doesn’t actively hurt, and really, ‘close enough for government work’ is Crowley’s lifelong motto.↩

7. They’ll be in these positions again, on a far more joyous occasion, less than a century later. Crowley will even throw in a little dancing hop as she approaches Aziraphale, for old times sake.↩

8. Lots of people have made the same stupid decision over the years and it hasn’t ended any better for them. Though, Crowley does take special pleasure in obliterating the Nazis for threatening Aziraphale. She does so love killing Nazis.↩

9. Aziraphale always used to love bike bells, she found them pointlessly charming and was constantly extolling their virtues. Prosper and his partner had had bells on their bikes and Crowley doesn’t think she’ll ever forgive him for taking that simple joy from her angel.↩


End file.
